The Use of Blog in Decision Making Skills Course

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2011) 491–500

Kongres Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran UKM, 2010

The Use of Blog in Decision Making Skills Course Ahmad Zamri Mansor* Centre for General Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Malaysia Received date here; revised date here; accepted date here

Abstract Blogs are normally used as a personal online journal. In the context of teaching and learning, blogs serve as an important tool to facilitate students' learning. Decision Making Skills is one of the courses that utilises blogs as part of teaching. In comparison with webpages, the blogs are more interactive, userfriendly and can be easily updated. It also can be embedded in SPIN learning management system and can be made more interesting using online forms, hyperlinks, video and audioclips, and widgets. In order to investigate the use of blog in managing an academic course, a case study of Decision Making Skills elective course was used as a case study. A blog called ZT2263 Kemahiran Membuat Keputusan was created. Learning materials such as lecture slides, relevant articles and students’ tutorial answers were placed The blog also embeds widgets for communication. This new approach received positive feedback from students. This paper aims to report the author's experience in using the blog. © © 2011 2010 Published Published by by Elsevier Elsevier Ltd. Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Kongres Pengajaran & Pembelajaran UKM, 2010 Keywords: Educational blogs; e-learning; Web; online learning experience; educational technology; higher education; Malaysia;

1. Introduction Blogs are normally used as a personal online journal. The popularity of blogs are on the rise due to the userfriendliness in terms of management. To manage a blog, one does not need to have specialized knowledge in creating websites. Acording to BlogPulse (2010) that there are nearly150 millions blogs in the Internet. There are over 24000 new blogs created in the past 48 hours. Among the most popular service providers that offer blog webhosting such as blogspot, wordpress, journal and so on. What is so special ablout blogs? In comparison with the traditional and static webpages, the blogs are more interactive, userfriendly and can be easily updated. It has the interactivity of an internet forum, but with more attractive features. This is best encapsulated by Wijnia’s (2006) explanation that a blog is: a form of communication that integrates three information patterns, consultation, registration and conversation which makes the weblog really a new medium. The weblog forms a bridge in the spectrum of communication channels on the internet between traditional web pages and an internet forum. (p.56)

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +6-03-8921-6891; fax: +6-03-8925-2976. E-mail address: [email protected].

1877–0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.05.072

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In the context of teaching and learning, blogs serve as an important tool to facilitate students' learning. According to Bianco (2009), the feature of an effective learning environment is usability which includes elements of orientation, navigation, emotion and interaction. The popularity of blogs is due to its interactivity (Williams & Jacobs, 2004) where students can learn from each other in 24/7 i.e. the accessibility is 24 hours a day and seven days a week (Wijnia, 2005). According to Blogstar (2006), the first person to coin the term ‘web log’ is Jorn Barger. Blogger.con is one of the providers that popularizes blogs. List of top five sites that offer blogging services, in terms of uptime are Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress, Window Live Spaces, and Blogster (Royal Pingdom, 2009). Uptime blogging service refers to reliability of a blogging service. The higher uptime blogging service means that the less time the blog server is down. The top free blogging service is Blogger as Typepad is not a free service. 2. Related Literature on Blogs There are a number of literature about the use of blogs in course. Blogs are used in courses in areas such as education (Blau et al., 2009; Hughes & Purnell, 9999), business administration (Williams & Jacobs, 2004), professional development (Instone, 2005), medical and health sciences (Boulus et al., 2006; Goldman et al., 2008) , and English language courses (Nadzrah, 2009). Blau et al. (2009), for example, explores interpersonal and group interactions in an academic course using blogs. Kalelioglu & Gulbahar (2010) discuss the use of blogs from multiple intelligence perspective. Duffy & Bruns (2006) explores the educational possibilities of blogs in encouraging interaction between teachers and students. Studies done by various researchers (for example: Goldman et al., 2006; Nadzrah et al, 2009; Supli Effendi Rahim, 2009) reveal that the use of blogs in education is beneficial and positively viewed by students. The following table presents some of the advantages: Table 1. Advantages of Using Blogs In Education Researchers

Advantages

Breinstein & Klein (2006)

Improvement in quality and quantity of learning taking place in the classroom.

Cooper & Boddington (2005)

Students were positive about the blog writing assignment.

Du & Wagner (2005)

Learner-centred environment. Enable students become more active outside the classroom. Learners can benchmark their work against that of others.

Goldman et al. (2006)

Enriches students’ learning. Students have opportunity to learn from their classmates Writing on the blogs is easier than speaking in the class.

Nadzrah et al. (2009)

Able to share ideas with friends in English Able to interact and work collaboratively Built up the students’ self-confidence in communicating in English Able to think critically.

Supli Effendi Rahim (2009)

Paperless, virtual environment Two way lecturer-student communication 24/7 Students can learn from other bloggers around the world Easy access to students’ performance in online learning activities

The above table summarizes the advantages of using blog as a tool of learning. The use of blog facilitates students’ learning by enabling them to extend their learning activities outside the walls of the lecture theatre. They can not only have virtual consultation with their lecturers but also communicate with other learners around the world. The conception of blog as a learning tool is contested by authors such as Wijnia (2004) and O’Donnell (2006). They propose the transformative role of blog as a “situated practice” (O’Donnell, 2006) and a platform for “ideal speech situation” (Wijnia, 2004). O’Donnell (2006) cautioned against viewing blogging as an isolated phenomenon

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because it represents a new way of thinking. For Wijnia (2004), blog is a potential platform for Habermas-based “Ideal speech situation” as it fulfills the conditions that “everyone has equal access to the communication, that there are no power differences between the participants and that the participants act truthfully towards each other” (p.1). 3. How It Began The idea of creating course websites came about when I joined UKM as a tutor in 1996. I was given a task to give a series of lecture to group of three hundred students. I was thinking of ways to distribute lecture handouts and to communicate with them. This led me to the idea of creating a simple text-based website using Tripod (http://www.tripod.lycos.com) online website builder. Then I learned website scripting language called Hypertext Markup Language or html from Webmonkey (http://www.webmonkey.com) and was able to create multiple-framed and password- protected webpages. I was also attracted to the idea of using an open source content management system called Joomla. It is a very attractive system because users have thousands of templates to choose from. In Joomla based website, you do not have to use frame because you can use wrapper instead. You can also embed web-based slides and widgets within the page. The website that I created using Joomla CMS is located at http://www.ukm.my/azm The growing popularity of blogs caught my eye as I was looking for a more dynamic and friendlier platform than the Joomla CMS. After a few weeks of experimenting with Blogspot and LiveJournal, I began to appreciate the educational potential of blogs. The question is, why I choose blog? How does a blog differ from a traditional website? Perhaps Martindale and Wiley’s (2005) definition could shed some light on the difference, For a visitor point of view, a weblog is merely a website. But behind the scenes, the blog server software is actively creating a polished website that is archived, easily updated, searchable, interactive, and potentially part of an extended topical discourse (p. 56). It is the user-friendly feature of blog administration that interests me and the feature is made more attractive with Blogspot’s integration with Google Docs and Picasa Web Albums. 4. The Decision Making Skills Course Blog The blog on Decision Making Skills Course was established in December 31, 2008. At the moment there are 100 articles have been posted to the blog. Layout of a blog consists of four main sections, namely the main wrapper, the sidebar, the header and the footer. The first two are the most important ones where the main wrapper displays blog posts whereas the sidebar houses user-customized navigation panel and embedded gadgets. The layout of a blog is represented by the following figure:

Source: http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/09/how-to-add-start-page-to-your-blogger.html Figure 1 Layout of a Blog

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5. Uploading the Learning Materials The learning materials are posted in the main post and appear in the main wrapper. Examples of the materials are lecture slides, relevant news and articles, students’ tutorial answer, YouTube videos, online form, online spreadsheet, and so on. The blogpost is arranged in reverse chronological order which means that the most recent article is placed at the top of the page.

Figure 2 Lecture Slides

Figure 3 Relevant News And Article

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Figure 4 Students’ Tutorial Answer

Figure 5 Youtube Video

Figure 6 Online Form

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6. The Sidebar The sidebar houses widgets from Google and external sources. Among them are labels of posts which can be displayed as course menu, lecture topics, and so on. Apart from that, the sidebar can embed external widgets such as online chat, Pingbox’s messenger, Twitter and Facebook Badge. Web-based photo albums, Google Calender and visitor’s tracking service widgets are also embeddable in the sidebar.

Course Menu

Lecture Topics

Figure 7 Course Menu and Lecture Topics

List of Students’ Postings

Figure 8 List Of Students’ Postings

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Chatango’s Online Chat

Pingbox’s Realtime Chat

Figure 9 Online Communication With Lecturer

7. Behind The Scene (The Back End) Please refer to the ‘Back End’ view as in Figure 10. The blog post on the right section is where you write or upload your posting. The postings could be in the form of plain text, graphic, tables or slides from external sources. ‘Add a Gadget’ section on the left is the where you create label-based menu, hyperlinks, image, embed Javascripts from external sources.

Figure 10 The Back End View

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8. The Pageview Analysis Blogspot has a back end’s section on page view statistics which enable you to see how your blog perform. For the Decision Making Skills blog, the highest was in July 2010 which has 9,025 pageviews. The post on Topic 9 Making Decision in Organizations attracted the highest pageviews of 699. The most popular r are SPIN, the blog’s URL and the Google search engine. The most popular referring sites are Google, SPIN, Yahoo and Facebook. These statistics are represented in the following figures.

Figure 11 Number Of Pageviews

Figure 12 The Post With The Highest Pageviews

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9. Feedback From Students The feedback collected from the students show they are appreciative about the blog. The students surveyed view the course blog as a new and interesting innovation. They also acknowledged the use of blog is a pedagogically good and effective way of learning. The blog is perceived as informative and interactive as it facilitates lecturerstudents communication. Among their comments were, 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Sangat menarik dan ianya adalah satu perubahan dalam P&P (it is very interesting and a change in Teaching and Learning). Membantu untuk terus berhubung dengan pensyarah walaupun di luar kelas. (It helps us to communicate with the lecturer, even outside class). Cara yang sangat berkesan, cara yang baru dan perlu dipraktikkan. (An effective and new approach and need to be practiced). Penggunaan blog dirasakan bagus disebabkan pelajar berpeluang beritahu masalah pada pensyarah. Kemudian banyak maklumat dan contoh diberikan. (The use of blog is good as a student could consult the lecturer. A lot of information and examples given. Sangat bagus kerana memudahkan pelajar untuk mengakses dan berinteraksi dengan penyarah. (It is very good as it make it easy for students to gain access to and interact with the lecturer). Dapat membantu dan memudahkan pelajar untuk mendapatkan maklumbalas dalam kerja-kerja assignment yang diberikan dan sebagainya. (It helps students to get (lecturer’s) feedback back regarding the assignment that we need to do). Banyak membantu dalam segi pemberitahuan markah tugasan, cara membuat tugasan. Boleh dikatakan macammacam ada. (It helps a lot in terms of informing us about marks for our assignment and also how to complete the assignment. It has everything!)

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